Chapter Text
Peter doesn’t understand why he always winds up in these situations. The rest of the superheroes he knows may be captured once or twice, but Peter has been facing criminals alone since he began.
So, it might be that he’s bad at communication. He hears of situations and goes off to face them without making plans or telling others. Karen always asks if she should alert Mr. Stark before Peter enters a fight. Mr. Stark is always telling him to call if he’s dealing with more than one person. Aunt May wants him to check in every hour, or she threatens to report him as a missing person to the police.
They all think they need to protect him. Even Peter’s suit doesn’t think he should - or even can - take care of himself. So, maybe he does it to prove them wrong. Maybe he does it because otherwise he would feel like a child. He knows, he knows: technically he is a child. But he’s also an arachnid-style superhero who has willingly faced death way more often than most adults.
It’s stupid, completely idiotic really, but Peter wants to be better. He needs to be better. How can he save other people when he can’t even handle himself?
He doesn’t think to tell anybody before he enters the warehouse (because of course it’s another abandoned warehouse). He’s just wearing his suit, crawling on the wall to find what he can about the place. Some people had been reporting strange and disturbing noises around the location, so that’s what Peter’s looking for.
His hair stands up on the back of his neck the moment he’s inside, but it doesn’t feel too dangerous or frightening- just a little bit creepy. Once his feet land on the floor and he looks around, it gets a lot worse.
There are bodies, two or three of them, and the Peter can’t look because-because-
Jesus, that looks like a makeshift rack with a very real, non-makeshift dead body stretched out more than any human should be and every joint is wrong , in the wrong place and Peter thinks he’s going to be sick.
When he turns around his face is mere inches from that of a woman. He staggers back and she doesn’t move. All of her limbs are twisted in ways they shouldn’t be, poking through the spokes of a wheel. She’s hanging upside down with hollow cheeks and complete stillness and Peter is so, so glad she’s dead because he doesn’t think that pain could be bearable for anybody.
Peter pulls his mask away from his mouth and nose and he actually does throw up now, and he heaves until there’s nothing left in his stomach. He’s on his hands and knees and Karen is telling him that there are three dead human bodies and she’s listing off their injuries and Peter doesn’t want to hear.
But he has to, because he’s the first person here who’s come to help, and they deserve the respect. He needs to bare witness to their last account. When she’s finished going down the list- and it’s a long list- he nods and stands. He’s only a little bit woozy on his feet.
“Look for people who have gone missing in the past week, see if any of these faces line up,” Peter says, and he makes his way towards a shape in the corner- the body he hasn’t seen yet. He knows how the man died before he can analyze it clearly, but it doesn’t help him prepare at all.
The man’s hands and feet are tied and has a metal bucket strapped to his stomach. Peter knows this guy died of internal injuries caused by… caused by trapped rats trying to burrow their way out. When he shifts the body, hands going to untie knots, two of the rodents scurry away, leaving small, bloody pawprints on the floor. Peter removes the bucket, and there’s a third one, sleeping. In a cavernous hole that it ate out of a living man’s chest. There are rat droppings and torn intestines easily visible, and Peter tries not to choke.
“I have found no matches in New York’s missing person database,” Karen interrupts softly. Peter’s eyes drift to the man’s face, and it’s twisted and wretched and horrible. It takes all he has not to cry.
“Widen the search,” He says, and his voice sounds distant, even to him “Send the coordinates to Mr. Stark, but tell him it’s not an emergency. Karen, I-I’m going to go now. I’ll check in soon, don’t worry,” Peter takes off the mask.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to Karen, he could actually really use the company. And it’s not that he’s afraid of vomiting again either, although he is. Peter takes the mask off because executioners wear masks, and he doesn’t want to be that, doesn’t want to do that.
So he leaves the mask on the ground while he gets the last rodent out of the man’s stomach. Peter tries to rearrange the body - to make the man look more peaceful - but it’s cold and stiff and no matter how he tries, he can’t find a way to cover the wide, gaping hole. He layers a web over the man’s chest, like a bandage, and he lays the guy’s hands across his stomach, like they always position a corpse in a coffin.
He makes sure the man’s eyes are closed before he moves onto the woman. She’s a lot more difficult. He has to climb onto the large wooden wheel to untie her shattered limbs, and, when he tries to grab her, the flesh seems to melt off in his hand. She’s decomposing. She’s been here for a while. Peter can’t find a way for her to look at rest- her arms and legs are broken in so many ways, in so many places.
He continues on to the rack. He had learned about it during a medieval unit of Junior High. It shouldn’t exist any more, there shouldn’t be a man stretched out and broken on one. Each and every joint, with the exception of his fingers and toes, have been dislocated. Peter tries the knot, but it’s too tight, it’s been pulled too much. Instead, he has to go to the lever, struggling to imagine how somebody could hurt another human being so badly, while he tries to bring the wooden structure back together.
Peter unties the knots. They’re still difficult, but he manages to release the man’s hands and feet. He lays there, unmoving, and Peter realizes that this one is different. This one is still warm.
Or not ‘ warm ’ so to speak, but definitely not as cold as the other two. It hits Peter like a bullet that this man probably only died a few hours ago. He feels like he’s choking again, and now Peter just wants out. He’s scrambling to the first body to get a mask, and he doesn’t hear the sound of a door closing behind him.
He’s kneeling there, holding his mask in his hands, when he begins retching again. He’s dry-heaving, and crying but it doesn’t stop. Not until there’s a sharp crack filling the air and pain in the back of his head and everything goes dark.